meta posts

Big Ideas: The Game of Life: single-player, or MMO?


Since it's the day before Christmas where I am (with a nod to those of our readers who do not celebrate Christmas -- congratulations on escaping the seasonal guilt), I thought I'd take a step back and get a meta-level look at life as it relates to video games. Well, to be honest, that's what every installment of Big Ideas is, an exploration of some meta-idea or another. But this time around, let's personalize it just a bit further. To wit: If life is a game, is it single-player or MMO? The answers may shock you!

Or you'll just skip the whole piece as ridiculous after the first few paragraphs, in which case consider it my gift to you. In the spirit of the holidays, then, read on!

Independents Minds: Marketing Your Game


Independent Minds aims to take various aspects of indie gaming and present them to you each week. From game round-ups to design elements to interviews with prominent members of the scene, it's an exploration of what makes indie gaming great as well as what makes someone an indie.

Much as in the indie subgenre as well as the mainstream, marketing is everything. Getting yourself known is the hardest part of being an indie. It's not so much a concern for those making freeware games, like cactus, but for those aiming to make a pretty penny off of their hard work, getting good press is essential to the well-being of their business. But how does one go about doing this?


Happy 4th of July and a belated Canada Day


To all of our American readers the team at Big Download would like to wish you a happy and safe 4th of July (aka Independence Day). We hope you celebrate with style and stay safe as you attempt to ignite fireworks that are so big, they literally have skull and crossbones on them. To our Canadian readers we would like to wish you a happy, and belated, Canada Day. Hopefully you didn't lose any limbs while making stuff blow-up pretty either! But seriously America and Canada, you'd better save us some BBQ because we're all coming to your house within the hour.

WRUP: Nowhere nearly enough Mass Effect edition


This has been an exciting week in PC gaming! The release of Mass Effect, more information on the highly anticipated StarCraft II, and Valve has decided to let us back things up via the upcoming Steam Cloud service. (This is, of course, after most of us spent last week playing On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness - Episode One.) Going into this weekend we figured it would be a no-brainer as to what most of the Big Download staff would be playing....

Steven Wong, our fearless all around bad-mutha and Managing Editor is playing Mass Effect as we expected, but will be adding a side of Age of Conan and possibly some City of Heroes or City of Villains in the mix. Samuel Axon, blogger and caffeine fiend will be kickin' it old-school in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Deus Ex. John Callaham and David Craddock, aside from being our esteemed (and crazy workaholic) leads, will both be spending time playing on Steam. John's planning on spending time in Team Fortress 2, and David's got his sights set on jumping into the Get a Life mod for Half-Life 2. (Well, and he'll be checking out some mods for WarCraft III for an upcoming column, but that's work.) As for me, I have a copy of Mass Effect for my PC, and of course will be continuing my own all-over-the-place MMOG adventures for Massively.

How about you all? Will you be jumping into Mass Effect as well, or are you still playing through OtRSPoD? Perhaps you're more interested in fragging the crap out of people in TF2 after a (not very) long week? Tell us, What aRe yoU Playing this weekend?
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